Sunday 11th August
Read Psalm 69
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
This is a long Psalm of David’s, a cry for help in the midst of hard times and being sensitive of his many opponents and those who would like to see his downfall. The opening verses remind us of Jonah sinking in the waters, “I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me” (v2), but we also hear an echo of Jesus on the cross, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” (v21).
He declares that he is afflicted and in pain (v29 ) yet he immediately follows it with words of praise, “I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving” (v30). How can this be? How can you be in misery and pain and then speak of God in praise and thanksgiving? It doesn’t make sense – or does it? The Psalmist looks to the future and is filled with hope. The future with God always trounces the past, things to come with him are always better that is why in all circumstances it is always right to praise God.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
Monday Numbers 12:1-16
This passage is about Moses siblings, Aaron and Miriam, complaining about Moses because he had a Cushite wife. The background to this has many varied explanations but whichever it was there was inter-family unhappiness. Most probably Miriam was the instigator as the punishment that fell at the end of the story was on her.
The passage tells us something about Moses and something about God. Verse 3 tells us, “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth”. That’s quite a commendation, would that it could be said about us. People don’t often think of a leader in those terms.
The next thing the writer tells us is that the Lord told Moses, Aaron and Miriam to come to the tent of meeting where He came down in a pillar of cloud and summoned Aaron and Miriam to stand forward and then told them of the special position he had given Moses. They should not have spoken against him and in his anger, God left Miriam with a bodily affliction of her skin. It was not about his marriage but about his person that God defended Moses. Moses, humble man that he was prayed that God would heal her of the disease, which he did. Are we ready to pray for those who are against us or who complain about us? Good question.
The time had come for a look at the land God was giving to the people and 12 spies were sent out, one from each tribe to bring back word of the new land they were going into. Joshua who was the leader from the tribe of Ephraim was given the name Joshua which means God is our help instead of just Hoshea which means help (the change may have happened at another time but the writer inserts it here.
For 40 days they explored the land bringing back some of the fruit of the land and gave to Moses an account which was that the land was a good land but the people there were big, the cities large and that overall, they couldn’t think about capturing it. Caleb spoke up agreeing with the other 11 that the land was good but disagreeing about the impossibility of taking it over. His word was that they should go ahead because they were able to take it. The other 11, having spoken to Moses and Aaron about the wonders of the land went back to the tribes and told them that the land was no good and the inhabitants were too strong. “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes” compared to the giants who lived there.
We need always to take God into account when we worry about the enemies or difficulties in our lives, perhaps that’s why the writer mentioned the change of Hoshea’s name which means ‘helper’ to Joshua which means ‘God is my Helper’. The ten spies however were counselling the people not to go where God was leading them.
Wednesday Numbers 14:1-38
In this chapter we see outright rebellion against Moses and Aaron and of course the one whom they represent, God. They grumbled at their present situation and, forgetting the hardships, they said we would have been better off in Egypt. They went as far as to say, let us choose a leader to go back to Egypt.
Moses and Aaron felt helpless in front of the people and lay down but Joshua and Caleb, the two who returned with a positive message, took up argument with the Israelites and tried to tell them that, with God’s help, they were well able to take control of the land. It doesn’t appear that they were very successful.
The glory of the Lord appeared visibly at the tent of meeting which would have been a shock to the grumblers but the word of God to Moses was that the end of his tether had been reached and he would finish with the people and start again with Moses to make a new people of promise in place of this recalcitrant people. Moses says to God that if he does this the Egyptians will hear of it and pass word around that the Lord was not able to do as he said – bringing the people into the land he had promised – thus his name would be defamed.
God hears Moses prayer and so allows the people to live. He forgives them but is not going to allow the people alive at that time to enter the promised land but will take them into the wilderness to wander for 40 years until all those grumblers die off. The ten false spies die through a plague sent by the Lord only Caleb and Joshua are left.
After his meeting with the Lord who told him the judgement on the people, Moses reported all this to the people and their reaction was to mourn bitterly (v39). However next morning they decided they would do what the Lord intended for them, they would march forward and conquer the land. They said, we have sinned but we can put it right now by doing what we should have done in the first place. However, Moses told them they couldn’t go ahead without the Lord’s blessing and without his presence, yet they ignored him and went ahead the result being their defeat at the hands of the Amalekites and Canaanites.
Sometimes we have to accept God’s ‘No’ and accept his judgement albeit acknowledging his grace in forgiveness. The thing is, they were really trying to manipulate God. They were saying, you didn’t like what we did then, well what about this, an attempt to get God’s favour. They failed the test of obedience to God, they couldn’t pull it back again.
In this chapter we see God instructing the people in the offerings they would make. These food and drink laws signified the gratitude and worship of the people and the particular pattern was given by God possibly to make a clear distinction between them and the idolatrous behaviour of the peoples who they would be replacing.
They were to follow these strict patterns and so were the foreigners who came to live with them, there was to be no difference between them in the way they honoured and worshipped God.
Behind this was the instruction that the worship of God couldn’t be left to people’s own whims and decisions. In the New Testament Jesus gave instructions about the meetings his disciples an others would have when he was gone in what became the heart of Christian worship – the Lord’s Supper. “Do this, as often as you do it in memory of me”. We weren’t left with gatherings where we meditated or performed certain actions or did as we thought.
Saturday Numbers 15:22-36
This passage is about what the law describes as unintentional and intentional sin. This oftens puzzles people, however let us start with the consequences. Unintentional sins were sins committed by a failure of the people to observe a law but not with a deliberate intention of rebellion against God. We know that all sin is sin (Roms 3:23) but what the passage tells us here is that only unintentional sin can be atoned for. There is an intentional (or sometimes the Old Testament calls it high-handed) sin, which is a deliberate rebellion against God’s covenant and it cannot be allowed to continue but demands the removal of the people from the community, in effect death.
As an illustration we might think of the history of sailing. There would be crewmen who failed to carry out their duties on the ship, through laziness or deciding that they wanted to do something else, and the captain would punish them, at time severely, maybe with the lash. But the crime of Mutiny was something else entirely, it was striking against the authority of the captain and would deserve the capital punishment. There is a difference between bad and unruly seamanship and mutiny. That is what is being spoken of here.
In the story of the Sabbath Breaker in vs32-36 we see a man, deliberately against the demand of God, sinning with a high-hand against Him. In the New Testament this would be likened to the sin against the Holy Spirit for which there would be no forgiveness.
